Close photo of a small black outline scallop shell tattoo on the side of a finger, with a silver ornate ring on the neighbouring finger.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Scallop shell tattoo on a finger

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A small scallop shell is tattooed on the side of a finger, drawn as a black outline with radiating lines fanning up from a hinge at the base. The ink is solid black with no grey shading, and the shell sits centrally against pale skin. A silver filigree ring on the next finger and a glittery silver nail polish are visible, set against a grey mottled surface.

Hand Scallop shell Shell Outline Finger

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mara had come up the iron stairs for the tin of paraffin wicks and found the lamp already lit, which meant her father had gone down to the slipway without telling anyone. From the gallery rail she could see him out on the wet causeway, a lantern swinging at his hip, stooping every few yards to turn over the weed.

Keep reading

The scallop had come in on the last spring tide, and he had carried it up in his coat pocket like a secret. Its ribs fanned out from a hinge no bigger than a barley grain, each line running to the rim as if someone had ruled the sea's own clock. Mara had told him it was a pilgrim's shell, the kind painted on the old walking routes to the cathedral town, and he had laughed and said the only pilgrimage he knew was the Friday trip to the chip shop.

She watched the beam sweep the water and thought of the ledger on the kitchen table, the column of ships that had passed the light without a signal. Then the lantern stopped moving. He was kneeling by something pale on the rocks, and she was halfway down the stairs before she understood it was another shell, open and empty, the two halves still joined at the hinge like a closed hand.

Out on the causeway he held it up to the lantern, and the light ran along each ridge until the whole thing glowed. "Keep this one," he said when she reached him, pressing it into her palm. "Nothing that opens that neatly should be left to the gulls."